Debriefing on

World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
Intersessional Meeting, Paris, July 15-18

by Georg C. F. Greve <greve@fsfeurope.org>

Representative for WSIS coordination circle of German civil societies in German delegation
FSF Europe, president

Introduction

The main documents for the WSIS, namely the "Declaration of
Principles" and the "Plan of Action" had become very big, sometimes
self-contradicting and almost unreadable due to the many comments and
contributions incorporated. Therefore, the purpose of this
intersessional meeting in Paris was to go through the documents for
the WSIS and get them into a more concise, clear and workable shape;
so they would provide a good basis for further discussion at PrepCom-3
in Geneva, Switzerland from 15 to 26 September 2003.

With the WSIS being a UN conference, the countries were invited to
send delegations for the official negotiations, civil societies,
business and international organisations were admitted as mere
observers.

Thanks to the intensive discussions between the German WSIS
coordination circle of civil societies and the German government, one
representative of both business and civil societies was incorporated
into the official German delegation, which finally consisted of

Michael Leibrandt, BMWA (Ministry of Economy and Labour), Deputy Head

Dietmar Plesse, BMWA (Ministry of Economy and Labour), Delegate

Christin Maier, AA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Delegate

Susanne Zeller, German Commission for UNESCO, Delegate

Dr. Rainer Händel, BITKOM, Siemens, Advisor

Georg C. F. Greve, Civil Societies, Advisor

Procedural Overview

After the president of the PrepCom, Mr. Adama Samassékou, opened the
session, Mrs. Lyndal Shope-Mafole from South Africa was elected
chairperson of the intersessional meeting.

After the statements of observers, which took place each morning at
the beginning of the plenary, she sought to quickly go through the
documents paragraph by paragraph and simply tag those paragraphs for
later examination where any country sees need for discussion without
going into the text directly.

Although she tried hard to stick to this procedure, it appears that
many delegates were trying to get into the discussion of the
paragraphs already, so by 16:30 of the first day, only paragraph 38 of
the draft Declaration of Principles was reached.

The second day continued as slowly as the first and by the end of the
day, working groups were formed to discuss issues that arose during
the plenary session. The four ad-hoc working groups that were formed
dealt with "Good Governance", "Communication Rights" (Chair: Canada),
"Cybersecurity & Privacy" (Chair: EU) and "Internet Governance"
(Chair: Kenya).

Of most interest for civil societies were the groups on Communication
Rights, Cybersecurity & Privacy and Internet Governance, all of which
were open at least to observers from civil societies, sometimes they
were given permission to speak.

Also, Switzerland and the USA were asked to come up with a new draft
of the part about Free Software and open standards after the United
States had announced having problems with that particular part.

After further discussions on day three, a revised version of the
Declaration of Principles, containing the results of the working
groups was to be made available at 16:00 and briefly skimmed through
at 17:00. This session also turned into a more lengthy discussion that
was then ended rather forcefully by the chairperson at 19:00 after she
had issued repeated warnings about doing so from the start.

Day four again started with some discussions -- in particular about
the civil societies contribution -- and brief comments regarding the
Plan of Action before another version of the draft Declaration of
Principles was made available.

Outside that framework, the EU countries had a coordination meeting
each morning at 8:00 and intermediate meetings after new draft
versions had been given out. Also, the Western European and Others
Group (WEOG) met at 9:15 on the first, second and third day for
intergovernmental coordination.

The civil societies and their thematic groups had multiple
coordination meetings during these four days, at which thematic issues
and the statements by the civil societies were discussed and
coordinated.

Besides small, informal ad-hoc meetings, the German civil societies
held one coordination meeting on day two at 11:00.

There was considerable questioning of the drafting process both inside
and outside the plenary, as the compromises found in the working
groups did not seem to have found their way directly into the draft
and some parts were without identifyable source or modified in a way
that the party it was accredited to didn't feel it was treated
adequately.

Also the up to four layers of square brackets in the text met some
scepticism among the political delegates, who hadn't seen precedence
for this in any international conference.

Overall, a sense that the version of day three was of higher quality
than the version distributed on day four seems to have been almost
commonly accepted.

Thematic Overview

There were several topics that dominated the discussions at the
intersessional meeting in Paris -- especially those for which ad-hoc
working groups were formed.

Communication Rights

Many governments outright refused to consider the effects of
information technology on human rights, a topic often addressed
under headings of "communication rights" or "informational
self-determination" by civil societies.

After the viewpoint was brought up that this would mean defining
new human rights -- something the WSIS could not do as it was not a
human rights panel -- this view was quickly adopted and put forward
by governments from USA to China.

So although (thanks to the intransparent drafting process) it is
not clear what exactly the draft Declaration of Principles
currently says, references to human rights and basics of society
were apparently significantly reduced.

Both Brazil, which argued strongly for a more human rights based
vision in the document, and the EU, which was officially arguing
along the lines of the common position paper worked out before the
intersessional meeting, were unsuccessful at convincing the rest of
the delegates.

Within the EU, the positions seem to be varying quite a bit. Some
countries are more in line with China and the USA, others were
suggesting to take the first paragraph of the civil societies
document instead, as that seemed of much higher quality to them.

Cybersecurity & Privacy

After some discussions, the proposal of the EU was universally
accepted.

Only Russia made their acceptance dependent on the adoption of two
paragraphs against "cyberterrorism" and for "national sovereignty"
-- a position which they refused to negotiate. So after hours of
discussion, it was agreed to use the EU proposal plus the two
Russian paragraphs in square brackets.

Also the USA were distributing documents about cybersecurity and
homeland defense, apparently in an attempt to gain support for a
more restrictive regime.

Internet Governance

There are again to major fractions in the internet governance
area. One group, most prominently China, seeks to establish a pure
governmental organisation for internet governance. The other group,
mainly the USA and EU wish to see a reform of ICANN with a
strengthened influence for governments.

The position of the business sector is to leave it entirely without
governmental influence, while civil societies would like to see
strengthened direct influence of the users in the governance of the
internet.

Digital Solidarity Fund

Another issue debated is the creation of a Digital Solidarity Fund
that would help developing countries getting up to speed for the
information society.

Some countries -- especially the developing ones -- are very much
in favor of this fund, while others seem very reluctant. The German
government has for instance a clear position against such a new
instrument. Their reason is that there is already quite a number of
bilateral and multilateral activities in the "ICT and Development"
area. Also creation of such a new instrument wouldn't mean that it
would have sufficient funds. A position that seems to be supported
by a significant amount of other EU countries.

Free Software & industrial control of information (IPR)

Especially the USA demand to leave the issue of Free Software and
related issues about industrial control of information (IPRs) out
of the discussion. Their strategy is particularly one of
marginalising Free Software as a pure development model by
referring to it under the proposed marketing term "Open Source"
suggested in 1998.

The position taken by supporters of that viewpoint is to leave
these issues entirely up to the WIPO and WTO, declaring the WSIS
the wrong platform for these discussions.

"Classic" issues

Although no country would openly ask for removal of statements
towards gender mainstreaming or empowering youth, these sometimes
seem to disappear from the documents (as it happened with the draft
circulated on day three).

So it remains important to keep reminding the governments of these
issues that are sometimes still far from being understood and need
to be put forward with the adequate weight.

Political impressions

Regarding internet governance, a reformed ICANN seems like the most
likely outcome, since the USA are taking a strong position on this and
no EU country seems to be so much in disagreement to actually oppose
them on this matter.

It seems that for the human rights issues, the situation is very
complex, but with the exception of single countries like Brazil, no
country is willing to risk going beyond what was known in 1948.

So we are currently facing the risk that the only occurence of human
rights in the knowledge society will be references to the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the Millennium Declaration but no
explicit statement.

With respect to the cybersecurity & privacy issue, it seems that the
EU proposal -- which is substantially not very far from what the civil
societies are proposing -- currently has found strong support.

Russia is pressing hard for a more restrictive regime, though, and it
does not seem unlikely the USA will join forces with them. So given
that the EU is currently very careful about alienating the USA, this
situation should probably not be considered stable.

Regarding the Digital Solidarity Fund, it seems unlikely that in the
event it will be created there will be resonable funds made available
for it. Also its creation seems unlikely given the amount of
resistance particularly among the wealthier nations.

From a civil societies viewpoint, it would seem more useful to
concentrate on the systematic approach.

So focussing on making the system more just instead of pushing for a
(probably insignificant) fund -- that would then have to push money
against the slope created by a more inequal system -- seems like a
sane strategy.

Closely related to issues of human rights, cybersecurity, industrial
control of information and privacy is the Free Software question. Free
Software as a paradigm provides each human being equal access to the
cultural technique that software has become. It empowers the
individual regardless of origin, belief or nationality and provides
one seminal pillar on which informational self-determination is based.

From an economic point of view, the Free Software paradigm allows
sustainable development and a system without the strong monopolising
tendencies of the proprietary software system. Freedom of markets is
one of the freedoms that Free Software can help uphold.

Unfortunately, the USA were quite successful in their attempt at
marginalising Free Software as the "Open Source development model."

They were in fact so successful that even some civil society members
were accepting that marginalisation, equally using the "Open Source"
terminology to refer to Free Software.

Particularly the question of industrial control of information --
usually summarised under the acronym IPR, suitably expanded as
"Intellectual Poverty Rights" -- will become crucial for the
information and knowledge society.

Governments around the world seem under immense pressure by the
industry to leave these issues to the WIPO and WTO, which are both
strongly influenced by the industry. Although the WSIS cannot ignore
these organisations, leaving the issue of industrial control of
information out of the WSIS would make it useless.

Instead the WSIS would provide an excellent possibility to -- in
dialog and cooperation with WIPO and WTO -- reexamine some of the
established policies in the light of the information age, allowing to
get rid of those that prove unsuitable for this new era.

Future options

Germany was -- to the authors knowledge -- one of three countries
taking a civil society representative into their official governmental
delegation (the other two were Switzerland and Denmark).

This was a visible sign of a general undercurrent which seemed to
permeate a lot of the WSIS intersessional meeting. A new understanding
by the governments that civil societies have substantial contributions
to make to the WSIS process.

So it seems settled that the German government will hold more meetings
with the governmental, business and civil society sector involved to
come to a German position to the WSIS.

Something similar might be possible on a European Union scale and was
raised during the intersessional meeting in Paris. Getting the
European civil societies together and finding political support for
that kind of interface would provide an excellent opportunity to help
the WSIS do what it set out to do.

Personal remarks

While from the civil society side it is sometimes easy to overestimate
the power of governmental delegates or get the impression everything
was much more transparent to them, governmental representatives
sometimes seem encouraged to feel civil societies don't understand the
political process or make unrealistic demands.

For these reasons, participation inside the German governmental
delegation was an important step as it helped building trust,
understanding and confidence from both sides.

Inside the German delegation, the governmental representatives were
very open, helpful and cooperative. They were always willing to answer
questions about the processes, the background and the issues.

Also, once enough trust had grown to know that no unwarranted
statements would be made on behalf of Germany, they encouraged to
raise some of the issues with the other governmental delegates
directly. This may not become immediately visible, but it did allow at
times to raise the right point at the right time, which sometimes can
make a big difference.

Overall, the combined and coordinated approach with one representative
inside the governmental delegation and some people in the civil
society coordination process worked very well and is a model worth
building upon for the future.

Regarding the WSIS

From the viewpoint of civil societies, we have to make sure that human
rights, privacy, industrial control of information and Free Software
are put into right perspective and not left out of the WSIS.

The biggest lack that seemed to permeate the whole intersessional
meeting was lack of vision for the knowledge society and lack of
courage trying to create a truly visionary Declaration of Principles
for it.

So it seems that the governments of this planet are currently on the
brink of missing one very important and possibly groundbreaking
opportunity.